By Onochie Anibeze
One time Super Eagles captain Sylvanus Okpala has advised that Stephen Keshi’s failure to submit a provisional list for the Brazil World Cup should not draw bad blood between the Eagles coach and the federation.

“There’s nothing to worry about the list since there’s still time to do so,” Okpala said in Lagos yesterday.

He was one of the assistants of Keshi until the federation disengaged him after the Nations Cup in South Africa, saying at the time that poor funding was forcing them to reduce their backroom staff. Said he:

Okpala

“I support Keshi’s action. I think that what is more important now is the preparation. What will happen in the camp? What are the provisions the federation will make for the team to succeed? How will all the official and unofficial friendly matches going to be handled? What information do we have on our opponents?

Who among the technical committee will join in monitoring opponents for the technical crew? Which of the coaches will also play this role? What roles will be assigned each person? These are the issues that matter now and not the list. The list will eventually be released.

The players are Nigerians and everybody will know them. What is more important now is the preparation. I don’t think that there should be controversy over the non submission of the list. Keshi is still on track and the federation should be more interested in the preparation than on the list now.”

Keshi was expected to submit the list to the Technical Committee on Tuesday.

But he did not apparently employing delay tactics so that nobody tampers with the list as speculated in the media.

He told the media that he had submitted a list and the federation said that they were consulting on it. But we exclusively gathered that Keshi did not submit any list and had, for strategic reasons, pleaded for time on the grounds that he wanted to monitor more players.

Our headline on our exclusive, saying that NFF, KESHI LIED TO NIGERIANS appeared harsh to the football federation and they have reacted as published on page 59 but that did not debunk the meat of our story.